Why Stop Using Plastic Bags?
Monday November 24, 2008
Americans throw away almost 100 billion plastic bags every year, and only 1 percent to 3 percent are ever recycled, leaving the rest to clog streams, foul landscapes, and kill birds and marine mammals. Learn how you can help the environment by reducing the number of plastic bags that are produced and discarded each year.Photo by David Paul Morris/Getty Images
Comments
I have been changing oil for over five decades. In the first two I found a SERVICE station that would accept used oil in their tank. That I got fuel there helped. In the four decades in our house the first one included the above, and since then the county had recycle tanks at the drive in waste station. In fact they have tanks for other messy fluids like antifreeze as well. At the trash chutes they have an oil tank at each bay. And it does get used.
Recent laws require fuel station to have double tank walls with monitoring. Most local stations use these. One that didn’t took five months of pumping ground water through filters and absorbents to remove the “lost” leakage. I don’t have eve a guess what it might have cost, but four trucks were there the whole period with operators in attendance. It has now reopened with new tanks in place.
When I was working we used large amounts of hydraulic oil. For practical purposes it is like motor oil with different additives. We returned dirty or contaminated oil into drums and had excess property people find safe places to recycle it. One big machine had over a thousand gallons in three 550 gallon tanks. Piston was seven feet diameter. Force maximum 12,000,000 pounds.
We stopped using plastic bags years ago. It’s pretty simple. Wal Mart and others offer canvas bags for pennies.
But the statement that the bags which dont get recycled end up in oceans and elsewhere doesn’t take into account that most just end up in landfills.
Would be good to include that stat, if it can be found. That’s better than the bags being out in the open, but it is still a massive waste.